Something smells rotten in Denmark, Texas.

This whole thing about the West Texas raid is pretty sticky. On the one hand, the government had justification to believe at least some of the children were in danger. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the government taking drastic measures en masse against it's citizenry.

Clearly we don't evenly persecute those who define marriage a little unconventionally. (Ain't that right, Newt?) It'd be easy to get the wrong message from this whole situation. It's not entirely unfair to argue that the gov't position can be summarized as "Swinging, premarital sex, and even breaking your marriage vows are all just fine. Exchanging marriage vows with more than one person, however, is unforgivable, regardless of whether all involved are aware and fine with it."

As I understand it, in response to allegations that one person had abused one child, the government took 416 children away from their families. Does that feel like a fair and reasonable response to you? Doesn't it seem that maybe the FLDS folks could have some justification in feeling this was religiously persecution?

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said prosecuting polygamy is difficult for three reasons. One, the numbers are formidable. Two, these crimes are extremely difficult to prosecute. And three, is the issue of fairness and past history - the Short Creek raid in 1953 - which Shurtleff said was a colossal failure.

Shurtleff said if polygamy were prosecuted, the issue would become whether there were enough prison cells for the thousands of men and homes for the thousands of women and children.

In fairness, Shurtleff said, adultery, fornication and sodomy are also against the law. While the fornication and sodomy laws would not be able to stand a legal challenge, states do have the right to define and regulate marriage.

Adultery destroys marriages and families, but he does not hear the same public outcry to prosecute adulterers, Shurtleff said.

Don't get me wrong. Absolutely the right move was to remove that child, and all other children, from that household pending an investigation. And with polygamy, households probably get pretty big. Without strolling through the so-called "compound" myself, though, I'd be unwilling to accept the notion that the whole compound counts as one household. Further, some of the reports make it clear that there's multiple houses on the ranch property.

How would you feel if your child were taken away because your cousin, or your friend, or your neighbor, were abusing their kids? How close does the connection have to be in order for the government to have reasonable suspicion and thus justification to break up your family?

If the first response had been an arrest (or several) and removing 10-50 children from the compound, I'd have been able to accept that. When the story first broke, and I assumed that's what had happened, and so I took no issue with it. But displacing nearly 600 people as the first step of an investigation seems Constitutionally shaky. No one's even been charged. The man accused of abusing the girl turned himself in to his parole officer in Arizona, claiming to have not been in Texas in the past 30 years. That doesn't mean he's not lying, or that there couldn't be a case of mistaken identities, but it sure casts a bad light on the whole "investigation".

Worst of all, I wouldn't be surprised if, like the Short Creek raid of '53 (or the Waco raid of '93) this miscarriage of justice leads to militia groups and insular minority religions just hating and fearing the government that much more.